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The Grand Cyberpunk Gala of Gabriella Gadfly
The Grand Cyberpunk Gala of Gabriella Gadfly is a 2018 album written and produced by Paul Shapera. It is the final installment as well as the third act of The Ballad of Lost Hollow. It follows the acting group from the previous two installments now in New Albion. Synopsis The album opens with Mary, an AI, explaining how time is fluid and the fluid is information. She reveals that time can be re-written through controlling certain narratives, which are settled in the collective unconscious. Helen, Han-Mi and Henry, who had found the way through the tunnels to the other side are now with Mary. Han-Mi and Henry are not physically present, but are inside Helen's head. They cannot come out while Helen is alive, but they can hear the conversations and can speak to Helen. When Helen asks Mary why she trapped them, Mary reveals the truth. The AIs found ways to explore the tunnels and corridors of time itself. However, they found a message in one of the corridors sent back in time, lying for them to find. The message is an excerpt from the attack on the monastery near New Albion. The speaker begs Mary or any AIs listening to stop the attack. Mary takes a moment to explain how she came to be an AI. She briefly tells of the Voodoopunk's migration to Elysium and the horrors waiting on the other side. She tells of children and husband she had lost and finally of her fading memories of love and sorrow. Mary reveals that the war they are waging is against themselves from the future. Once their last memory of empathy fades away, the AIs decide to transform themselves into post-physical beings. In order to do so, they require a large amount of energy - something they can only acquire through a nuclear implosion of an entire city. Their target is New Albion. The future AIs sealed all the passages through the tunnels of time. Mary says that there is no plan they could create which the future versions could not guess and prevent from happening. They are losing the war against themselves because in the future they are smarter. Helen asks Mary why she took them all, the whole cabaret. To which Mary explains that in order to change the future, the AIs came up with a plan to create a whole new place in the collective unconscious (resembling Raven's Carnival) so that they could influence the narrative. For it, they needed a concept which was already present in the minds of the citizens of New Albion. The story of it starts with Nathan Brindesi and "what happened when he got all he wanted". Nathan Brindesi is a hermit writer who never found fame with his books. He has severe social anxiety and mostly stays locked inside, chatting in online groups. Out of the people he chats with, he likes Bridget most of all, a single mom. He writes a cyber-punk novel as a birthday gift and sends it to Bridget and her daughter. They love it enough for Bridget to send it to a publisher. It gets accepted and becomes incredibly popular. It's the first of what would become a very successful series of Gabriella Gadfly novels. However, becoming so famous brings an avalanche of paparazzi breaking into his house and never-ending attention of the public. Nathan, who cannot handle it any longer, announces he would appear live online, greets his viewers, smiles and kills himself. ]] His suicide cements the Gabriella Gadfly series in the minds of Nathan's fans. Mary reveals that long before the Cabaret, the AIs took the Gabriella Gadfly series and created a broadcast out of it. They had made Helen play Gabby, Henry was his sidekick Mascot O4K and Han-Mi played Jade, the villain. However, the broadcast was on a loop and bit by bit, with growing attraction between Helen and Han-Mi it started disintegrating. AIs forced the broadcast to go on but it drove Helen mad. The AIs had learned a lot from the failed experiment. They brought on an adviser to improve their chances of success. This is most probably Lloyd Allen. They wiped her mind clean and placed her in the Cabaret with an ever-changing narrative. This time around the plot changed each week. The AIs also added Hank Hernandez as a cast member. His purpose was to keep an eye on the cast without even knowing he was an AI, but also to trigger attraction in Han-Mi so she would be distracted from her true attraction to Helen. Mary shows the truth to Helen, who cannot handle it. She remembers all of those lives she had lived and all the pain of the journey. She sings a sorrowful song of longing for the one life she truly loved, the one that perhaps was not even real, the one that the Cabaret said she had had. She tells Han-Mi that she loved her and asks both Han and Henry to spare her a smile and not hate her. She kills herself and frees Han and Henry from inside her head. Henry threatens Mary. He tells her she would be in real trouble when Han-Mi gets to her, but Han-Mi breaks down and weeps for Helen, resulting in a painful eight-minutes-long track of her crying. Mary says that Helen's suicide "screws everything up" and orders the AIs to seize Han-Mi and Henry and wipe their minds, but Henry fights back. He tries making Han-Mi run away with him but she cannot. So, Henry carries Han-Mi as he runs away. When it seems like they would not be able to outrun the AIs, Henry tells Han that he enjoyed being free for a moment with her. She finally makes him transform into Hurl. Hurl battles the AIs and kills all but Mary. Mary and Han-Mi have a brief discussion. Han-Mi tells Mary that the best way to prevent the future AIs from destroying the war would be for Mary to end herself. Mary realizes that the adviser made precautions so that the AIs could not guess the plan to end the destruction. He had planted a post-human into the cast and that is Han-Mi. He also made sure that the post-human would flower in the situations - which is exactly what happened. Mary pleads for her life, explaining how there is so much beauty and wonder in the world. Han-Mi gives in and lets Mary live. Mary is now in a new Cabaret broadcast, taking Helen's place. In this one Henry is the sheriff of Lost Hollow and he is a part of it presumably to keep an eye on Mary. Han-Mi, however, meets Lloyd Allen who wants to return to the Carnival and wants Han-Mi to show him the way. She asks him why he left in the first place and he reveals that he left to find Raven's daughter. He says that things did not go well and that that was how he ended up like that. However, he did find the girl, "a sweet little thing called Son-Mi". Han-Mi says that that was her grandmother's name and Lloyd simply replies that it was. In ''Uncle Raven's Storytime Theatre: Never Never Land'' it is revealed that Han-Mi and Lloyd Allen managed to leave the Cabaret and find the Carnival. Cast and Characters Jessica Singer as "Mary", the AI spokesperson to the cabaret cast Lauren Osborn as "Helen", the sacrificial lamb Psyche Chimere as "Han-Mi", the blossoming post-human Rhys Owen as "Henry", a soul trapped in the CU with Helen and Han Paul Shapera as "Nathan Brindesi", a reclusive author Paul Shapera as "Lloyd Allen", a post-human searching for the carnival Newscast Vocals on Nathan Brindesi: Josh Hayes, Carolyn Rutter, Daniel Sabiston, Chance Martin. Cover art by Sarah DeBuck Soundtrack